I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity. –Gilda Radner

“Delicious ambiguity”! What a phrase. It sounds so…juicy and intriguing! I recall preaching and writing about ambiguity before. I think I remember making the suggestion to “embrace ambiguity” or explaining how my own personal theology accepts the ambiguity of life and finds the joy in mystery and wonder. It’s much different from some traditional faiths that claim to have “the answers”. But I propose that we can find joy, have faith and be hopeful in the face of not knowing the answers. I think that “delicious ambiguity” will be my new centering phrase and philosophy! I felt a renewed excitement bubble up when I read it, something that is hard to come by these days, so I wanted to share it with you.

The story we’re in right now seems not to be rhyming a whole lot and we certainly don’t know if we’re in the middle or still the beginning, and most definitely it’s about impossible to know when and how it’s going to end. I wonder, though, what is a “perfect ending”?

Does wanting a perfect ending suggest that we are holding ourselves, others, life up to unrealistic expectations? Wouldn’t a perfect ending suggest ease, lack of struggle, and therefore, lack of growth? Does a perfect ending mean ending up in the place we knew we were going to end up in? Is that really the joy we are seeking? Perfect and predictable sounds rather boring, don’t you think?

Or, does a perfect ending mean one that is unexpected, one that has come to us through the challenges we face? A perfect ending, in my opinion, is one which ends in love. It means that I still have, and receive, bountiful love for and from life, no matter the struggles. But let’s be realistic, the struggles are overwhelming right now, and they hardly seem to be life-sustaining in any way. So, how do we remain faithful to life and love?

There is so much in life that is out of our control. But the taste of ambiguity– one of the very essential ingredients of life– we can choose. We can choose bitter, or we can choose delicious. And only one of them leads to life-sustaining love.